Monday, 28 March 2011

Mesa of Lost Women: a connection found?

In one of my other lives I review (usually fairly terrible) movies for the filmwerk site. The older and more terrible the movie, the more likely I am to like it, and if it has a 'spontaneous' dance scene in it so much the better. Mesa of Lost Women is a largely forgotten and forgettable 1953 sci-fi film about a mad scientist, Aranya, who attempts to create a race of superwomen by injecting spiders with human growth hormones blah blah blah.

In this scene, one of the successful results of Aranya's spiderwoman experiments, Tarantella (played by the brilliantly named Tandra Quinn), attempts to lure the drugged escapee Masterton back to Aranya's web. As a side note, there are some obvious parallels with the barefoot dance scene in And God Created Woman:

Now, if you're wondering what all this has to do with belly dance, didn't that performance from Mesa of Lost Women remind you of someone? Particularly when comparing the moment at 5.22 in the clip from the film above with the moves at 4.57 in this clip?

2 comments:

Heeheehee. I have a DVD that the Suhaila performance is on ("Bellydance Fitness Fusion Yoga for Beginners" [Brief review: Not for beginners!]) and have watched it many times. And then I saw that clip from "Mesa" and it was like deja vu all over again, as the old joke goes.